Updates have been sporadic at best as of late because all the writers, including myself, have been busy with college. The blog move has been chugging along slowly while this old one is being kept on life support. Not to worry though because Wolf Hurricane will be back with a vengeance. In the meantime I’ll just be here to write filler posts. Hooray for filler.

There will be no anime overview this week because I didn’t watch anything. This post will instead focus on asking for WordPress theme recommendations. Wolf Hurricane will be moving to private hosting with its own domain. Before the move is official, I’m calling for advice from all the anibloggers on good themes to use.

My criteria are:

Fairly large customizable image header (About the size of the current one I use)

Width of 500 pixels for text area (I like to post pictures that are resized and 500 is an easy, even number)

Area for page tabs/links near the header

Widget ready

White background highly preferred

So in other words, a theme that is very similar to my current one is what I’m looking for. I actually really like the Ocean Mist theme, but it’s been a pain to configure on its own. I would be very grateful if any experienced bloggers out there could lend me a hand on this matter. You will be amply rewarded with yuri for your time.

I’ve got some stuff in store for you readers out there that will remain a secret for now. Secrets help to build suspense and it’s fun to be the secret holder. So in essence this post is just here to tease you. Don’t you hate it when that happens?

The Key fanboy in me is playing through Tactics’ One ~ To the Radiant Season. Going into it with previous experience from other Key works, One really feels like a prototype to the later games. It’s primitive by today’s standards but still remains a solid bishoujo game. Also of note, Key’s art has come a long, long way since One. Maybe I’ll write a brief review once I finish a couple arcs.

Let’s see what’s on the old schedule. I’ll definitely try my best to do some research on the spring anime lineup and do a real preview with short synopses. This is easier said than done because I can’t read any Japanese. The manga-anime adaptations and sequels should be easy enough to cover, but it’s the other stuff that worries me. If only Japanese had been offered in high school… There really isn’t anything else new or noteworthy to talk about for now.

The second installment of my Friday Night Double Feature series was Korean cinema, with one film I’d wanted to see for ages but had never had the chance and one film I love dearly and wanted to share with whoever happened to be around. The Host, surprise monster film hit from last year, was the former film, and the well-built psychological horror film A Tale of Two Sisters is a film that two years ago I watched twice in 24 hours–the second time just to follow along with an IMDB analysis of the plot.

I apologize for the delayed writeup, but please, read on and find pearls of wisdom.

I actually started this write-up back at episode eight and went from there. With eighteen episodes now under our belts, it looks like I can make a fair summary of Clannad’s ladies. Several of the girls present striking similarities to previous Key girls while a few break free from the mold to be different.

Note that this is just a comparison of similarities, because Key really loves to stick to the archetypes that work. If anything changes as the episodes roll on, I will reflect said changes by editing this work in progress. I’m only going to cover the five main girls, so that means the minor girls are excluded for now. I may add them at a later time though. This post contains obvious spoilers for those who haven’t seen Clannad, Air, or Kanon. I should technically include comparisons to the girls from One ~ To the Radiant Season but whatever. You have been warned.

China never ceases to make me laugh. First it was Olympic Haruhi and now it’s the prospect of gaming as an Olympic sport. The ancient Greek Olympians must be rolling in their graves by now. Check out this article over at CNN. To make a long story short, a video game competition will apparently be an unofficial part of the 2008 Olympics. China even considers gaming a recognized sport.

If you’ve seen televised video game competitions before, then you already know what a travesty it is. It’s just an awful idea, because gaming as a spectator sport is a joke. Oh goodie, let’s go watch a bunch of geeks play video games! To quote the article, “…video gaming is serious business”. I like games as much as the next guy, but gaming =/= sport. Competitive eating is higher on my list of potential Olympic sports than gaming.

This is a tentative weekly section devoted to critiques of the most recent anime I’ve seen; Usually the newest episodes that I want to talk about without going too in depth, but I may focus on older anime as well.

Clannad episode 18: Woo-hoo. Nagisa is back baby. Kyou and Ryou just got served. Well technically, Nagisa was the one that got served… In the face with a tennis ball. Ouch. It still goes without saying that all the other girls pretty much know that they lost the game to Nagisa. I especially liked the girls ganging up on Okazaki to eat their food. Tomoyo’s arc has been lackluster compared to the other girls, but I still like her character as a whole.

Shakugan no Shana II episodes 14-15: Still catching up after missing episodes for more than a month. At least the plot is finally starting to go somewhere now. It was getting really stale with all the early episodes being slice-of-life.

That about does it for this post since that’s all I had time to watch. Have any of the winter shows gotten better in the meantime? Some of them are starting to show promise and some opinions would be nice.

Tenchoooooouuuuu! Filler posts need love too, but they have to pay for it. I probably post way too many Lucky Star pics. I’ll blame that on… Hmmm… Global warming. There are a couple 90% complete articles that need a few finishing touches before they get published. Anime episode summaries will come sooner or later. Well now. Back to gaming studying!